


Pranayama

by missazrael



Series: Namaste AU [4]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Foster families, Friends to Lovers, Gen, High School AU, M/M, Mental Illness, Multi, Namaste AU, Slow Burn, oh seriously another slow burn?, yes another slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 16:03:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7112779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missazrael/pseuds/missazrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, your life changes, all at once.  You can't have anticipated it, you can't have known it was coming, but then it does, and nothing is ever the same again.  That's what happened on the day I met Annie Leonhart and Bertolt Hoover.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>The continuation of the Namaste AU, taking place ten years prior and detailing how Reiner, Annie, and Bertolt got to know each other.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Sometimes I just get feelings about things, you know?

I can’t explain it, and I don’t know when they’re coming. I don’t even _like_ it when it happens, not usually; the feelings, the urges, can be damn near overpowering, and it’s like a switch gets turned in my head. I’ve had fewer as I’ve gotten older, thank god for small favors, but they’ve gotten more powerful with age too.

I don’t remember the first time it happened, but it became a family legend that’s been told my entire life. When I was a really little guy, not even out of diapers yet and hardly walking, my grandma bought my dad a new set of scrubs—the poor guy had been running himself ragged on his internship, and had to keep rotating the same two tired, worn out sets of scrubs every other day. He was going in for a night shift, and changed into his scrubs before he came downstairs to say goodnight to me.

I took one look at him and burst into tears.

That in and of itself wasn’t so unusual; I love my dad, as much now as I did then, although I like to think I’ve gotten a lot better with the separation anxiety. What was unusual was the force of the crying, and how I wouldn’t—how I couldn’t—stop. I think I remember that, a little, crying so hard it felt like I would die before I’d be able to stop, filled with a grief I didn’t have the words to describe. 

My dad and my _oma_ didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t my typical crying jag whenever I was separated from my dad for too long (even then, I knew what a gift it was to have someone love me as fiercely and blindly as my father does). This was something completely new, and nothing would soothe me. My dad was ready to call into work and take me to the hospital, thinking I’d burst my appendix or ruptured an organ or was somehow dying horribly in his arms, and he wrapped me in my green blankie to rush me to help.

As soon as the blanket fell across his chest and covered his new scrubs, I stopped crying, suddenly a cooing, cheerful baby again. I’m told that it was like I just turned off the sadness, and that was that, it was over.

Until the blanket slipped off my father’s shoulder, and then I was inconsolable again, weeping so hard I gave myself a nosebleed.

My _oma_ , veteran of raising two young boys herself, figured out what was going on before my dad did. She took me back, cradling my head against her chest so I could weep out my agony there, and told my dad to go change his shirt. He did—even now, he knows better than to cross her when she gets a certain tone in her voice—and when he came back, wearing his tired old scrub shirt, I held out my arms for him to pick me up and was all smiles and cheeriness again.

“What was _that_ about?” he asked her, and my _oma_ shrugged, knowing what had just happened but unable to explain it.

“I guess little Reiner doesn’t like red.”

I still don’t like seeing my father in red, but I don’t cry about it anymore.

So yeah, I get these feelings, and I never know when they’re going to happen or what they’re going to be about. Once my mom got rear-ended while I was riding with her, and the guy who did it was being really shitty to her, really aggressive and angry. There was something about his mouth I didn’t like, something about his teeth that set me on edge, and when he got too close to her, that was it. I came slamming out of the car and put myself between them, a misshapen thirteen year old who bore a closer resemblance to a pimply, ambulatory potato than anything human, and got a fully grown adult man to back down. They exchanged insurance info and drove away, and it wasn’t until later that my mom told me she thought I was going to tear the guy apart if he’d pushed the issue.

I would have, too. No one threatens my mom with teeth like that, not while I’m here to have anything to say about it.

But here I am telling you about all the bad times, the ones where the feelings were negative or confusing or almost got me into fights. There’ve been a lot of good ones too, ones that made my life brighter and more beautiful, even if they didn’t make sense at the time. I could tell you about the kid I met in kindergarten who I knew was going to be a good friend to me, and who was and is, or the sergeant in the military who I knew would keep me safe. But if I’m going to tell you about my feelings, my little hunches that I’ve learned to listen to, I need to tell you about the two that matter, the two that changed everything around, the two that made me who I am today and opened up my entire world.

I need to tell you about meeting Annie and Bertolt.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just your average teenaged boy, doing your average teenaged boy things.

The sun is just starting to rise over the trees in the backyard, sending weak autumn light into Reiner’s windows, when he wakes up.

He snatches the alarm clock off his nightstand, thick fingers fumbling it off before it has a chance to ring. There’s no one around for it to wake, but old habits, built over five years of sharing a wall with his twin brothers, are hard to break. Even with the alarm turned off, Reiner pauses for a moment, waiting for the sounds of squalling, angry infants.

Satisfied that he is alone and his twin brothers are presumably still sound asleep in the house, Reiner bounds out of bed, hitting the floor with a barefoot thump. He stretches, his spine crackling and popping as he bends to touch his toes—making it only as far as mid-shin, but he counts that as a win—before pulling on a pair of shorts, a t-shirt worn thin and pale by repeated washings, and his battered running shoes. He grabs a banana from his dresser top, brought up last night for this exact purpose, and tries to peel and eat it quickly. He fails; the shape of the banana in his hands leads to thinking, to lurid, fanciful images invading his mind, and Reiner sighs, giving in and closing his eyes. 

He eats the banana slowly, not biting it at first, sliding it into his mouth and towards the back of his throat, testing how far he can insert it before he gags. He licks the underside of the banana as it goes deep, and imagines it’s something else, something far more exciting, something with a handsome, dark-haired man on the other end. Then he pushes it too far and gags a little, pulling it out and coughing to catch his breath. With the moment thoroughly broken, Reiner devours the banana as quickly as he can, thumping his upper thigh with one fist in hopes of persuading the half-wood he gave himself to die down, and leaves his room. 

Reiner pounds down the stairs that run up the side of the garage, leading to his little room above it. The room had been the summer’s project for himself and his father, and Reiner loves it, both for the privacy it offers and for how accomplished completing it made him feel. It had also been an unexpected luxury, having his father to himself while they worked on the construction, reminding Reiner of when he’d been much smaller and he’d has his dad completely to himself. He loves his brothers and sister, and understands that they’re younger and need their parents more than he does, but it had still been a gift to work with his dad, sweating together under the summer sun and carefully building Reiner his own space. The younger kids are already fighting over who’s going to move into it next, and it’s only been done for a month.

Reiner trots into the backyard and up onto the patio. The back door is locked, but that’s fine; Reiner crouches next to it and pushes on the doggy door, making it swing open inside a little, and whistles softly. He hears a grunt from inside and then the clatter of nails on a tile floor, and he ducks out of the way, letting the door swing shut.

Not a moment too soon. A split second later, Boomer, an aging but still robust red heeler, comes barreling through, his stub of a tail wagging frantically and his leash between his teeth. Reiner laughs and drops to one knee, opening his arms wide, and Boomer drops his leash to launch himself into Reiner’s arms and cover his face with kisses. Boomer knows very well that Reiner is the only person in the house he’s allowed to jump all over (he can get away with it _sometimes_ with the largest male, but usually only if no one else is around), and he takes full advantage of that privilege, prancing on all four feet, his tail wagging so hard that his entire lower half shakes, jumping and wriggling and licking every part of Reiner he can reach.

“Okay, okay!” Reiner finally puts a stop to it and stands up, and Boomer lands on all four feet, waiting eagerly for his leash. “I love you too, buddy. You ready to run? Who’s my good boy? Who’s ready for a run!”

Boomer makes a strangled yapping sound—he is, he is! he’s the good boy!—and starts tugging on his leash as soon as it’s attached. Reiner pulls on it—not hard, never hard enough to hurt his oldest friend, but enough to establish who’s in charge here—and Boomer comes to heel like the good dog that he is. Clearly that incident with the tugging was some other dog, or a grave oversight.

They take the first block nice and slow, Reiner giving Boomer plenty of time to sniff and mark his territory. He waves at one of their neighbors, who works in the city and is the only other person up at this hour. She waves back before climbing into her car and starting her long commute into Trost, which is just starting to sparkle on the horizon, the sun shining off its glass and steel buildings. 

Then, once Boomer’s bladder is empty and he’s asserted his dominance over the other dogs on their block, they let loose and fly. Reiner’s legs churn over the pavement, and Boomer bounds along beside him, his tongue hanging loose and flapping behind him as he pants. When they hit their stride, it feels to Reiner like they could run forever as the town wakes up around them, slowly coming back to life and getting ready to face another fall day. He likes his hometown the best when it’s like this, waking up and rumbling back to life, when everything still feels fresh and new and clean.

They can’t run forever, though; Boomer starts to flag after two miles, and they stop at a drinking fountain so he can get a drink, Reiner holding down the button to make the water flow and Boomer standing on his hind legs so he can lap it up. The way back is slower, more leisurely, more a jog than the run from earlier, but they’re both still lathered with sweat and panting as they climb the steps up the back patio.

“Good boy,” Reiner tells Boomer approvingly, and scruffs his ears as he fills Boomer’s water dish. The dog drinks it dry before trotting to a corner of the deck, lit by early sunshine, and collapses in a heap to take a nap. 

Reiner lets himself into the house, the leash swinging from his hand. He puts the leash back where it belongs, on a little hook next to Boomer’s bed, and cuts through the kitchen on his way upstairs. His father is already up, standing over the stove and blinking blearily at a pan of bacon, the meat hissing and spitting as it cooks, and Reiner can feel himself start to salivate.

“Morning, Dad,” he says cheerfully, and lands a friendly punch on his father’s shoulder as he passes. His father grunts at him, and reaches for his nearby cup of coffee. He’s not the most vocal person under the best of circumstances, but especially not first thing in the morning.

Reiner hurries up the stairs, and slips past the rooms where his sister and brothers sleep, breathing a sigh of relief when he sees the bathroom is free. Probably not for long, though; he can hear giggling and quiet rustling behind the twins’ door, and he ducks into the bathroom and locks the door behind him.

He doesn’t take a long shower, not when he knows he’ll take another one later after practice, and probably another one before he goes to bed, but he can’t go to school stinking like sweat and dog slobber. He rinses off, only using soap on the stinkiest parts of himself, and ignores his cock when it opportunistically perks to life, trying to convince him to take his time and get in a quickie before heading off to school. Once he’s clean, Reiner puts on the clothes he laid out for himself the night before—khakis, a dark blue polo shirt that fits tight around his biceps—and spritzes on some Axe Body Spray before emerging and heading downstairs.

The family is already assembled around the breakfast table, and Reiner slides into his spot next to his dad. There’s a steaming pile of bacon and scrambled eggs in front of them, and he digs in, suddenly ravenous after his run.

“Did you have a good run?” his mom asks him, keeping one eye on the twins and their slow, painstaking efforts at spooning cereal into their mouths and the other on her own breakfast of egg whites and grapefruit.

“Yes,” Reiner tells her, crunching into a strip of bacon. “Mr. Zeke has his Beasts flag out already.”

Reiner’s father chuckles at his elbow. “The Beasts are never going to win the pennant.”

“Right?” Reiner grabs a piece of toast, and his sister Annica rolls her eyes at him from across the table. “He’s nuts if he thinks they’re going to beat the Oceaneers.”

Alexander’s eyes widen, and he drops his spoon into his cereal, splashing milk onto the table, and starts singing, “Goooooo, Oceaneers! Go, go, Oceaneers!”

Andreas picks up the chorus, singing along with his twin, his little arms flailing as he attempts a one-child stadium wave. “Wave, wave! Gooooo, Oceaneers!”

Reiner’s mother sighs, and pins the twins with a stern eye. “If you both eat all your breakfast, you can wear your Oceaneers hats to school today.”

“Gooooo, Oceaneers!” The idea of their hats, procured over the summer on a very memorable afternoon when Reiner and his dad took them to their first baseball game, is enough to stop the singing, and the twins get down to the serious business of their breakfast. Reiner does the same, grinning and shrugging when his mom gives him The Look. Technically, it was his dad who mentioned the baseball team, not him.

Annica uses the interlude to steal a piece of bacon, then bats her eyes at Reiner. “Can I ride to school with you today, Reiner?”

“Dunno.” He grins at her, in the wide way that shows all of his teeth (braces free for six weeks now), and she sticks her tongue out at him, stained with orange juice. “Depends on what Mom says.”

“Mom, can I ride to school with Reiner?” Annica knows how this game is played.

“Do you mind?” their mother asks, deftly catching a spoon one of the twins dropped before it hits the floor.

“I don’t know…” He arches an eyebrow at Annica, his grin widening. “Am I going to get any sass on the way to school?”

“I would _never_!” she proclaims, throwing one hand over her heart. “It hurts my feelings that you would even _think_ of such a thing!”

“Uh huh. I’ve heard that before.” Reiner moves to take the piece of bacon back, and she crams it all in her mouth before he can. He reaches across the table while she’s distracted, and she’s too slow to avoid getting her bangs ruffled. “Yeah,” he tell their mom, taking his hand back in a flash when Annica tilts her head back and tries to lick it. “I’ll take her.”

“Thank you,” she says appreciatively, and their father mumbles something that might be thanks as well. He clearly hasn’t had his second cup of coffee yet.

Reiner and Annica hustle out of the door about twenty minutes later, narrowly avoiding a meltdown from one of the twins when he can’t find his left shoe. Annica climbs into the passenger side seat of Reiner’s old beater hatchback and slams the door with aplomb before immediately beginning to take out the braids their mother had so carefully plaited into her hair.

Reiner watches with amusement as she untangles her hair. “Is that why you didn’t want to ride with Mom?”

“No!” He gives her the eye as he starts the car, and she relents a little. “Not the _only_ reason. I didn’t want to ride in the baby car with the babies.”

“Ah.” Today is the twins’ first day of kindergarten, which starts a week after regular classes, to give the rest of the school time to settle. “You don’t want to be associated with them?”

“What’s _associated_?”

“You don’t want people knowing they’re your brothers?”

“Not yet.” Third grade is apparently a minefield of popularity and drama, and Reiner imagines that a pair of kindergarten brothers could affect Annica’s social status. “I’m a big kid now, and they’re still babies. Plus,” she drops her voice low in a conspiratorial whisper, “Mom would have made me hold one of their hands and walk them to their classroom, and their hands are always sticky.”

Reiner snorts laughter into his palm. “Isn’t that the truth.”

“Yes.” Annica sits back, satisfied that her much-beloved older brother is on her side. “It is.”

Reiner drops her off in front of the elementary school, and she suffers through a kiss on the cheek before vaulting out of the car, weaving her way through parents and other students like an old pro. Reiner watches until she’s in the building, and then he pulls away from the curb and drives to the high school.

It’s the second week of classes, and things are starting to settle in. Teachers are giving homework and actually expecting it back; the freshmen are starting to lose that wild-eyed, frantic look from the first few days; the seniors are settling into their final year before freedom by loafing around and looking bored by everything; and things are moving along as normal.

Reiner waves to his friends in the halls; he’s a naturally friendly, boisterous guy, and a lot of people know and like him. He’s even managed to befriend a couple of freshmen, who slink behind him in the halls like pilot fish following a shark. Even a few of the teachers, hurrying to their classrooms with cups of coffee in hand, smile and nod at him as he passes. Reiner wouldn’t call himself Big Man on Campus—firstly because it’s a stupid, outdated title, and secondly because he really doesn’t care at the end of the day what other people think of him—but he can admit that he’s well-liked and well-known.

First period is Poetry class, an optional English class Reiner got slotted into and intended to change on his first day back at school. Or rather, he intended to change it until he walked into the classroom and laid eyes on the teacher: a man new to the school, with an unpronounceable Russian last name, with dark, swept-back hair and high cheekbones, who instructed the class to call him ‘Mr. Gustav’ on the first day and then proceeded to read them _Invictus_ in a rich, rolling voice. Reiner can still hear the last stanza in his head, ringing between his ears at random parts of the day.

_It matters not how strait the gate,_  
How charged with punishments the scroll.  
I am the master of my fate:  
I am the captain of my soul. 

Reiner had gotten chills, and the petite blond kid sitting beside him, whom Reiner didn’t realize was a boy until he opened his mouth and spoke, had leaned in and whispered “Powerful, huh?”

Reiner had blinked, knocked out of the spell cast by the poem, and looked at the kid. Someone he didn’t recognize, maybe a transfer student. “Yeah.” He’d held out one brawny arm. “Look.”

His arm had been pimpled in gooseflesh.

The kid had smiled and scooted a little closer, speaking under his breath so he wouldn’t interrupt Mr. Gustav, who was busy asking a senior what she thought of the poem. “I’m Armin Arlert. I just transferred in here.”

Reiner had held out of his hand, and Armin had shook it politely, his fingers nearly swallowed in Reiner’s broad paw. “I’m Reiner Zacharius. Pleased to meet you.”

Instead of switching out of poetry, Reiner had gone to the main office and reorganized his entire schedule so he could have Mr. Gustav again in third period, for AP Composition. He doesn’t technically _need_ AP Comp, not when he’s planning on going to veterinary school and joining his dad’s practice after a stint in the military, but he worked hard to charm the ladies in the office and make it happen. And if it means that he gets to spend two hours a day watching Mr. Gustav and thinking about his dark hair and the way he moves his hands when he’s teaching, Reiner just considers that a bonus. Armin’s pretty interesting too; they’re working on a project together for the class, comparing _Invictus_ to another poem of their choice. Armin is gunning hard for _Dulce Et Decorum Est_ , but Reiner is still unconvinced.

“The end message is completely different!” he argues, splaying his hands wide in front of him. “One is all bitter and angsty, and the other one is really hopeful!”

“But that’s the point!” Armin’s eyes are bright and glowing under his fall of blond hair, and Reiner is suddenly reminded of his uncle and the way he looks when he’s getting intense about something. Which is pretty much constantly, Uncle Erwin has no idea how to turn it down a notch. “Both poets look into their souls, and what they found at the bottom were two sides of the same coin.”

“If we’re going in that direction, then I think this one is better.” Reiner flips open their textbook—which is really just a poetry collection—and points to the one he read last night before bed. He’d been intending to go to sleep, but had read this poem again and again, unable to stop, lost in the magic of the words.

Armin’s nose scrunches as he leans over Reiner’s arm to look down at the page. “ _Alone_ , by Edgar Allan Poe? I don’t know this one.”

“Read it,” Reiner insists, pushing the book towards him, and Mr. Gustav smiles at them as he walks past.

The rest of the day passes uneventfully; Armin is a sophomore and so isn’t in any of Reiner’s other classes, and none of his other classmates are as interesting to talk to. After school is soccer—Reiner has learned to call it soccer when he’s at school, or everyone will think he’s talking about the _other_ kind of football—practice, and Reiner hits the field with glee. He’s the biggest guy on the team, but that doesn’t mean he’s slow, and he’s scared more than one opposing team by charging down the field like a bull moose and stealing the ball from them.

They have a game coming up soon, and Coach Dietrich works them hard. By the time practice is over, Reiner is drenched in sweat and his leg muscles are trembling, but he feels good. He lives for this kind of exertion, the kind that leaves him gasping and exhausted at the end, with burning muscles and a pounding heart. He loves soccer, but he wishes it had more upper body elements to it; he’s going to have to lift some free weights when he gets home to keep from losing definition in his chest and arms.

When Coach Dietrich releases them, Reiner trots over to the stands and settles onto a bench. The cheerleaders are still practicing, and while he has no interest in watching them, Historia is one of them, and he hasn’t seen her all day. He waves up at Ymir, a surly goth kid who takes art classes and dyes her hair a different color every week, lingering further back in the stands, and she acknowledges him with a nod. Reiner smirks to himself and bites the inside of his cheek; he can see what’s going on between her and Historia, even if the two of them aren’t ready to admit it yet.

“Hi, Reiner!” Historia burbles over and sits down next to him, all bright eyes and flowing blonde hair and cute, flippy little skirt. 

“Hey, cute thing.” Reiner turns his face to the side, offering her his cheek.

She wrinkles her nose at him. “No, you’re sweaty.”

“So are you.”

“I’m not sweating, I’m _glistening_. And I’m not asking you to kiss me, either.”

“Fair point.” Reiner relaxes back on the bench, hooking his elbows over the back of it and stretching his shoulders. He can feel Ymir glaring daggers at him from higher in the stands, but he ignores it. He is absolutely zero threat to Ymir in this regard, but if she’s not going to get to know him well enough to realize that, he’s not going to force the issue. Let her brood. “How was your day?”

“Good! I got an A on my lab report!”

“Of course you did, you’re the best one in the class,” Reiner teases.

“Only because you’re not in it.”

“Physics?” Reiner mimes gagging. “Give me good old reliable biology any day.”

“Why look at cells when you can spend time studying the stars?”

They go back and forth for awhile, cheerfully chatting about science, the lunch room, how obnoxious the football players are, how young the freshmen look and how they _never_ looked that young, their weekend part time jobs, and various other things. Historia is Reiner’s best friend, and he wishes their schedules lined up a little better. They’ve been close ever since middle school, and even dated briefly in the eighth grade. It had gone fine, for awhile; both sets of parents had thought it was cute, and her parents had been grateful she’d gone for such a polite, respectful boy, one who seemed perfectly content to hold her hand forever and not push physicality any further. Then they’d tried to kiss, and it had been… it had been boring, Reiner had been bored by it, and Historia hadn’t seemed upset when he’d broken up with her the next day, nor surprised when he’d come out of the closet six months later. She’s dated a few guys since then, and could have her pick of any of the guys at school, but seems to prefer spending her free time with Ymir, and Reiner thinks he knows where that is going. He’s not going to say anything, though. They’ll figure it out on their own, just like he did.

“Do you need a ride home?” he asks her, after they’ve caught up for about half an hour and his breathing and heart rate are back to normal.

“No, thank you! I’m walking home with Ymir!” Historia stands up, her skirt bouncing prettily around her knees, and waves up at the stands. “Ymir, why are you all the way up there? Come down and say hi to Reiner!”

Ymir closes her sketchbook and obediently slinks down the stairs, and Reiner gets to his feet, trying to make himself look as non-threatening as possible. Ymir reminds him of a feral cat; make too sudden of a movement and she’ll bolt. She’s wearing a safety pin through her lower lip today, he notices, and her hair has a bright purple streak in it.

“Hey,” she says to him, and Reiner nods back.

“Hi.”

Historia looks back and forth between the two of them, and when it becomes clear that today won’t be the day when they put their differences aside and make friends, she sighs and links her arm through Ymir’s. “Bye, Reiner. See you tomorrow.”

“See you. Bye, Ymir.”

Ymir grunts in response, and Reiner bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

He takes a quick shower in the locker room—stalling for time is part of his strategy, because he’d prefer to use the locker room by himself—and then drives home. On the way, Reiner gets a strange, familiar feeling in his chest. Something is going to happen today, something important, and it’s waiting for him when he gets home. Most of the time, Reiner dreads when he gets his feelings, because he can’t explain them, can’t make sense of them, and they feel like they’re coming from a different world, a different life. He can’t explain why he hates seeing his dad in red, or why he gets so defensive of his mom. He can’t explain why he met another little boy in kindergarten and was suddenly struck by an immense, inescapable urge to apologize to him, to tell him he was so, so sorry. It was just his good luck that the little boy, while confused by the sudden confession, had been the forgiving type, and had turned out to be Reiner’ s best kindergarten buddy until his family had moved away at the end of the year. 

This one, though… this one is different. Usually his feelings are negative, or at the very least, confusing as hell, but this one… Reiner feels something in his chest lift, a weight he didn’t know he’d been carrying lighten, and he finds himself smiling and humming as he drives home. He’s going to learn something today, or find something out, and it’s going to be… it’s going to be like a puzzle piece, slotting into place.

Reiner parks his car on the street and goes into the house, which is unusually quiet. Boomer greets him at the door, and Reiner is petting him when he hears his dad, calling from the kitchen. “Reiner?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Can you come in here, please?”

Normally, that question and that tone of voice would throw up warning signals—what’s going on, what did he do?—but now, Reiner has to make himself stop smiling. He can’t explain this joy, his relief, and knows that it would only upset his parent. He strides into the kitchen, and finds them at the table, holding hands and looking at some very official-looking papers strewn out before them. “What’s up?”

His father looks up, his eyes confused and sad behind his heavy bangs, and gestures to an empty chair. “Sit down. We have something to tell you.”

Reiner sits, and waits for the news that will change everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's Reiner, and here's his life, complete with a dog and a loving family. Surely Annie and Bertolt are just as well off, and we'll be finding about them next chapter, right?
> 
> ... right?
> 
> It's worth mentioning that the poems Reiner and Armin talk about are real poems that coincide very well to their canon selves. _Invictus_ in particular is very relevant to Armin, and _Alone_ is great for Reiner. _Dulce Et Decorum Est_ works for the Survey Corps in general. ~~An excuse to talk about poetry in my AU? Don't mind if I do!~~


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing Annie and Bertolt.
> 
> Content warnings for unspecified mental illness and racial slurs.

She wakes up, and somehow knows that everything is different.

Annie sits up in bed, her room dark and gloomy, the windows long since covered so that no natural light can enter, and listens. She listens for all kinds of things, things that she’s long since realized other teenagers never think about: are there mice in the walls again? Is her father playing music downstairs, or is it silent? Is the siren engine clicking, a constant, almost soothing litany from downstairs?

She can’t hear anything, the house sitting silent and still around her, and that is more worrying than anything else. Annie throws the sheets off her legs—with the windows covered and no air conditioner, the temperature inside the house is stifling—and gets up, feeling her way around the room like a blind person until she finds her dresser and the candle and matches she knows are there. A burring hiss and the smell of phosphorous later, and she lights the candle, chasing some of the shadows back to the corners of her room.

Her room is simple, almost spartan, with none of the effects of teenaged girlhood. It contains a bed, a dresser, a wardrobe, all handmade of rough-hewn wood, and nothing else. Its one window is boarded up and covered by a heavy blanket, keeping out all the sunlight, and Annie has no idea what time of day it is. She thinks it’s morning, probably early; it _feels_ like morning, and in a house with no clocks and no electricity with the windows boarded up, what time it feels like is about all she has to go on.

Annie pads out of her room, her bare feet soundless on the wooden floor, letting the light of her candle be her guide. She doesn’t really need the candle; she’s lived in the same house her entire life, and sometimes she didn’t have candles to light her way. Today, though, she has light, and she’s going to use it.

“Daddy?” Her voice echoes through the house, and for a moment, she’s afraid that she won’t hear an answer, that she’s been left her alone, to fend for herself. Not that she couldn’t; her father has spent her entire life preparing her for Emergencies. Natural disasters, violent uprisings, the fall of civilization as everyone knows it: Angus Leonhard had prepared her for all of them, drilling contingency plans and options into her head since she was old enough to know what an Emergency was. But the one Emergency he never talked about was the one Annie fears the most: what is she supposed to do when he’s not there?

“In the living room, darling,” her father’s voice drifts back to her, and Annie breathes a sigh of relief. He’s here. His accent is thicker than normal, carrying the twang of his boyhood in Texas rather than the flat syllables of Trost, the flat syllables Annie uses, and that’s concerning, but he's _here_. It’s still the two of them against the world, the way it’s always been.

She walks down the hallway, her footfalls a little louder now, now that she knows she doesn’t have anything to fight. This could all be a test, another of her father’s games to test one of her skills, but she doesn’t think it is. Not when he’s using that accent, not when the siren engine is turned off.

The living room is almost as dark as the rest of the house, save the single green, blinking light in the corner. Annie frowns when she sees that; it means the phone is off the hook. They don’t have electricity, haven’t for six months, not since her father decided it made his skin crawl and was giving him cancer, but they still have a phone. It sits silent most days, but her father insists on having it. He wants to know when the world starts to fall apart, and he needs a phone for that. Annie thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’s hoping that her mother will call him, when the world starts ending, and for that reason alone, he dutifully pays his phone bill and keeps the line active.

She takes another step forward, lifting her hand away from the candle so it will cast more light, and her father swims into view. He’s slouched in his ratty old armchair, the one that smells like sour sweat no matter how many times Annie tries to clean it, the phone dangling limply from his hand. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Daddy?” she repeats, taking another step closer. “What’s going on?” _What’s wrong_ , she wants to ask, but she knows she’ll get no response to that question. That isn’t the kind of question a warrior asks, and she is, first and foremost, a warrior like her father. Warriors assess the situation before anything else, and they never, ever let their emotions interfere with what needs to be done. Emotions get people killed.

Her father smiles at her, and he looks wan and washed out in the faltering light. “Hi, Annie-bean.”

“Why isn’t the siren engine on? Does it need more gas?” Annie starts towards the kitchen, where the siren is kept, but stops when her father holds up one hand. Nervous energy crawls up her arms and legs, the skin on her back rippling over her spine. Something is wrong, something serious, and she unconsciously crouches low, scanning the shadows for an enemy she doesn’t yet know.

“I turned it off.”

“Why?” For as long as she can remember, the siren engine has ticked away, keeping time, marking its relentless march forward. Her father religiously fills the engine’s little gas tank, spends an hour or so once a week doing maintenance on the siren itself so that it will always be ready, primed and prepped against Emergencies, against any eventuality. To not hear it is disconcerting; to know her father turned it off himself is horrifying.

Her father sighs, and doesn’t answer. Instead, he lifts the phone to his face and examines it before dropping it into his lap. “Do you know you have a brother, Annie-bean?”

“Wh… what?” The question is like a bucket of cold water to the face, and Annie can only gape at him for a moment. “You… you and Mom?”

“No.” He shakes his head, his tangled, dirty hair falling into his eyes, and Annie realizes she’s forgotten to trim it recently, and it’s gotten too long on him. “Your mother and I… we only had you.” He looks up, muddy brown eyes meeting hers for a moment before he looks off into the corner of the room, a faint smile on his lips. “Best thing we ever did.”

“So… how do I have a brother?” For years, Annie had wanted a brother or a sister, someone to play with when her training was done, someone close to her own age who wouldn’t make fun of her or call her a freak. She’d lost that desire as she’d gotten older, as she’d realized how stupid and beneath her everyone else was. She has her dad, and that’s enough, but the news of a mysterious brother is still something she wants to know more about, and she takes a step closer.

Her father closes his eyes. “Before I met your mom. She had him with another man, and then left them. We met a few months later, and then you came along.” He opens his eyes, and they’re distant, looking at something Annie can’t see. She doesn’t remember her mother, not really; all she has are a few fragments, jealously and closely guarded, more sensory images than actual memories. A few notes of a song, hummed close to her ear; a tall, looming presence, holding her, soft and warm; and a smell, a smell that Annie has never been able to find anywhere else. Her mother wore perfume, she decided long ago, and when she finds out which one it was, when she can finally place the smell, that’s what she’s going to wear too. “Good people, your brother’s family. Kind. His dad married a nice lady, and they’ve got a whole mess of kids now.”

“Who cares?” Now that the shock has worn away a little, Annie can focus again. Her eyes are better adjusted to the candle’s light, and her father’s face is waxy and pale, his hands trembling in his lap. “You look sick, Daddy. Did you take your medicine today?” Her father takes a regular dose of pills, a veritable handful, big pale green ones and other, smaller ones, diamond shaped and blue.

He nods, and she starts to relax a little. Sometimes this happens, sometimes the medicine doesn’t work, but when it doesn’t, she just goes out into the woods behind the house for a few days. It’s part of her training, part of getting ready for an Emergency. Being able to survive on her own is important, and when her father’s pills aren’t working is the best time to practice.

“My medicine… Annie, it’s not…” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his unshaven throat, and Annie feels the first real spike of fear run through her. “It’s not working no more.”

Her first instinct is to laugh, and Annie has to swallow hard to keep the giggles from burbling up. “Do you need me to go out into the woods? I’ll get more gas for the siren engine and then I’ll go.”

She’s halfway across the room, halfway to the little can that holds three liters of gas, before her father calls her back. “Annie, _stop_.”

It’s something in his voice that gives her pause, that makes her freeze in her steps. She’s heard her father’s voice raised before, heard him bark orders, heard him whisper plans in the dark, going over and over and over their strategies, and she’d listened to every word. She’s never heard him sound like this. He sounds… _broken_.

“Daddy?” Her voice cracks like a little girl’s, and Annie swallows again, the laughter dead now, swallows down on the fear rising up to replace it.

“The medicine isn’t working.” She can hear the struggle in his voice, the way he’s fighting against his drawling accent, the way he’s determined to make himself understood. “I’ve been… I been… _I’ve been_ … I’ve been having bad thoughts. Real bad thoughts, and the medicine don’t make them go away anymore. Annie-bean,” he says, and his voice has a whining, pleading note to it. “Annie-bean, turn around so I can see you.”

She turns, slow and ponderous, all the muscles in her legs turned to water. The candlelight falls on her father’s face, and he looks like a skull with glittering eyes deep in its sockets. He tries to smile at her, and it’s ghastly. “Your brother… he’s got a good family. He’s got… he’s got the kind of family you deserve.”

“Daddy, _no_.” Annie nearly drops the candle, horrified by what her father is suggesting. “You’re the only family I need. Just the two of us, right? We don’t need anyone else.”

He looks away, and she sees his pulse beating in his throat. “You need better than me, Annie-bean.” He holds up a hand, silencing her protest. “You need a _real_ family. Someone who don’t have bad thoughts taking care of you.”

In the distance, Annie hears sirens, the high-pitched warble of a police siren, and then she does drop the candle, barely noticing as hot wax splatters on her bare feet. “Daddy, _what did you do_?”

“I called the police.” He sighs, and slouches down, nearly falling off his chair. “The papers for your brother’s family are on the table. They’ll take real good care of you.”

“Daddy, NO!” Annie leaps forward, wrapping her arms around her father’s narrow chest and pushing her face into his shoulder, smelling his sour, unwashed scent and feeling his bones grind together under her hands. He’s lost weight, he’s hardly there at all anymore, and as the sirens grow louder, she thinks absurdly of how she can make a stew tonight, something filling, so he can eat and get strong again.

Her father pets her hair as the sirens yodel louder and louder, until their screaming fills the entire world. “I love you, Annie-bean. I’m doing this so I don’t hurt you.”

~*~

Bertolt leans his head against the car window, watching the cornfields speed past, endless and golden. It’ll be harvest time soon, and maybe this year the Wagners will finally let Thomas drive the combine, like he’s been pleading to for the last two years, and maybe they’ll even let Bertolt…

He shuts that thought process down, slamming it closed like a vault, swallowing the key and throwing it out the window to be lost in the rows of corn. Thomas might be driving the combine, but Bertolt won’t be. He won’t drive the Wagner combine, this year or next or ever, and he clears his throat, rolling down the window to spit out onto the highway.

Miss Rico glances over at him, a reprimand on her lips, but when all he does is spit and then roll up the window, she relaxes. “I’m sorry about this, Bert.”

“Bertolt,” he corrects; Miss Rico has been his social worker since he was a little kid, and sometimes he thinks she sees a tiny, scared five year old whenever she looks at him. Bertolt isn’t that kid anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time.

“Bertolt,” she agrees, amiable enough. She probably doesn’t want him destroying any part of her car, which is new and shiny and only has a few thousand miles on it. Her new husband bought it for her, and Bertolt wonders if he’ll still have her as his social worker in a few months, when she inevitably gets pregnant and doesn’t have time for his case anymore. He can’t blame her for wanting to get rid of him, especially now. He’d rather have a new baby to take care of than a stupid, ugly sixteen year old kid who keeps growing out of all his clothes.

“I think,” she tells him, her eyes on the road, her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, “that we need to rethink our strategy, don’t you?”

Bertolt shrugs. She’s going to do whatever she’s going to do, and he’s going to go along with it. It’s not like he has a choice, anyway; the Wagners were his last chance, and he obviously blew it. It’s not his fault he looks the way he does, or that it was windy last Sunday and he wore a bandana over the lower part of his face as they walked across the church parking lot. All the men in the little town do that, now and again, when the wind gets going and kicks up dust and grit. He hadn’t even realized he’d been doing anything wrong until they’d gotten in the church and he’d looked up and seen the way everyone was staring at him, and the disgusted, furious looks on their faces. Bertolt, never liking to be the center of attention, had tried to back up and tripped over his own huge, clumsy feet, and as he was falling, had tried to catch himself on Mr. Zackly.

He knows what Miss Rico will write in his chart, under reasons why he didn’t work with the Wagners. **Non-compliant. Shows of aggression. Potential for violence.** He assumes they don’t have a code yet for **Looks too Muslim-y and embarrassed us in front of everyone at church.** How times change; a few years ago, he’d gotten turned down from another foster home because he had, quote, “Looked too much like a Jew.” And now he looks too much like a terrorist, and he’s neither of those things but it doesn’t matter because he’s always been disposable.

“You’re getting older now, and more independent,” Miss Rico continues, and Bertolt tears himself away from his thoughts to pay attention to her; he’s never been one hundred percent sure whose side she’s on, but she is the most consistent adult in his life. “So I’m thinking that maybe you’d do better in a group home, something where you’d be around other kids your age and could start getting yourself ready for life after the system.”

Bertolt nods, even though that sounds like an excuse if he’s ever heard one. He knows how this works. He’s too old now, deep in the swamps of puberty, too old and too tall and too strong if he did decide to actually do all the things he’s been accused of. He’s not cute anymore, or whatever passed for cuteness when he was little, and foster families, the good ones, only want cute little kids who they can mold and shape into what they want them to be, a trick that Bertolt never learned. He’d tried—god, how he’d tried—but something had always fallen short. He’d always been _too_ something—too quiet, too watchful, too shy—and now he’s too Middle Eastern looking and feeds into the fears everyone in the country has right now. He remembers something he’d heard a foster mother say, back when he was a lot smaller and still had some hope; he’d been sneaking into the kitchen for a drink of water, and had heard her talking on the phone to a friend. “He’s a sweet boy,” she’d said, and Bertolt had stopped, listening because maybe she’d say something that would tell him the secret, something that would let him know how he could _stay_ , and he’d liked that house, with its high ceilings and big yard and a dog to play with, “but he’s… I don’t know, he’s _empty_ inside.”

Bertolt had crept back to his room, still thirsty, and hadn’t been surprised when Miss Rico had come to pick him up two weeks later.

And now here he is again, riding with Miss Rico and watching the corn go past, listening as she tells him about the group home he’ll be in, and the school district where he’ll be going to school—Bertolt wonders what she would say if he told her he’d been hoping he could stay at the school he was at, where he’d almost made some friends and wasn’t regularly tormented in the halls anymore, but then decides it wouldn’t matter, because there’s nothing she can do to change the Wagner’s minds—and waiting for the rest of his life to start happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the rest of the trio! Their lives are... not as happy or as stable as Reiner's.
> 
> To put things in perspective, Pranayama takes place in 2003, just as the US was entering the war in Iraq. There was a lot of very powerful anti-Muslim rhetoric floating around at the time, and hence the position Bertolt finds himself in. It should be noted that the Wagners are bad people and have done a really bad thing here.
> 
> Miss Rico is the neighbor Reiner waved to during his morning run.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie meets Bertolt.

The girl is silent and sullen in the backseat, her face pointed out the window and her hair falling sloppy and uncombed over her eyes. Nile watches her through the rearview mirror, partially out of concern for his cruiser—she’s not the first young punk he’s had back there, and if she decides to start causing problems, she won’t be the first to try and tear the backseat apart—but also with a genuine interest that surprises him. When he has a moment or two, stopped at a red light or on a long stretch of highway, he watches her, studying the lines of her face and eyes. 

He shouldn’t be looking for Mike or Erwin in her, he knows; she shares no blood with the two men, is of no relation to them at all. But he can’t help it, and with every stolen moment, every quick examination, Nile sees more of his oldest friends in her: her hair is the same light, sun-kissed color that Erwin’s used to turn in the summers; her nose is sculpted and long like Mike’s; her skin is as pale as Reiner’s, the kind of skin that makes Nile want to ask if she put on sunscreen this morning. He even considers it for a few minutes, knowing he has a bottle of sunblock in the glove box, but decides against it. It would be too easy to misconstrue his concern as creepy rather than fatherly, and if the girl is going to get a sunburn, there’s little he can do about it.

His son will be wearing sunblock today, Nile knows; Marie is very conscientious and careful about making sure the little guy doesn’t burn, and will deck him out in a hat and sunglasses on top of sunscreen before letting him outside. And then he’ll wander back, scratched up, filthy, hat lost and sunglasses cracked, possibly with a frog in his pocket, but perfectly happy and content.

“You’re smiling.”

“Hmmm?” Nile looks in the rearview mirror, and the girl is watching him. He’s struck again by the ice-blue of her eyes, and how familiar they are; a shade paler than Erwin’s, but with the same intensity, the same cool interest. It’s the first time she’s spoken in over an hour.

She shrugs and looks back out the window, propping her chin in one small hand. “Nothing.”

Nile watches her a moment longer, keeping his eyes off the road longer than he should, before looking back of ahead of him and rolling one shoulder in unconscious imitation. “Thinking about my kid.”

He doesn’t think she’ll answer, and is pleasantly surprised when she does. “You have a kid?”

“A son. He’s three.” Another glance in the mirror, and while the girl is pointedly not looking at him, he can tell she’s listening. “He likes to go out in the yard and get himself good and filthy, and then he tracks mud inside the house.” He cracks another smile. “I told my wife not to go for the pale yellow color scheme if she wanted kids, but she had to have it.”

The faintest hint of movement from the backseat; the girl has nodded, and Nile bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning wider. He knows he shouldn’t be talking to her like this, and normally he wouldn’t, but this one is different. Technically, he shouldn’t even be driving her to her group home, it’s below his pay grade since he made sergeant, but Nile has always had a bit of a knack with the younger offenders, and this one could end up being a part of his family. Mike and Erwin might not be blood relations, but they’re family, have been since Nile was old enough to understand the concept of family, and he wanted a chance to spend some time with the girl. Mike didn’t ask him to—Mike wouldn’t have even considered asking him—but Nile took it on himself to volunteer his time and driving abilities. He doesn’t even feel bad about the subterfuge; screening a suspect is important, and he knows damn well that Mike tends to lead from the heart, and Nanaba has a soft spot when it comes to kids.

“What kind of colors do you think would look good on the walls?” he asks the girl; it’s a nonsense question, a meaningless one, but he wants to see how she reacts.

She looks at him in the mirror, her pale brows (so much like Reiner’s, and Erwin’s when he was her age) lifted in surprise, and then back out the window. She _considers_ the question, which he likes, before answering slowly. “Blue, I think.”

“Why?”

The look she gives him tells him that she thinks he’s the dumbest thing to ever walk the earth. “It’s the color of the sky.”

“Mmmm.” He nods. “Maybe some green too?”

She shakes her head. “No. Windows would be better.”

“You like a house with lots of windows?” Her dad’s place, the place they’d pulled her from, had had all the windows boarded up, all the light blocked away. It had been a dank, grim little cell, hardly more than a shack, and the house she’s describing, with its blue walls and lots of windows, paints a promising picture.

“Whatever.” She scowls, but then reconsiders. “You can see the outside through windows.”

“Nothing nicer than watching the world move outside your window,” Nile agrees, and she rolls her eyes, slouching back down and pointedly looking out the window. He won’t be getting much more information out of her, but that’s okay. Nile has enough to work with.

~*~

Bertolt sits hunched in the hard plastic chair, his shoulders pulled tight around his ears and his hands buried in the pocket of his hoodie. He wishes he could pull the hood up and hide his face, hide his offensive _otherness_ from everyone, but he knows the director at the group home would just make him take it down again. He’s already taking up too much space, occupying too much of the office with his body, and he’s scrunched himself up as much as he can, making himself as small and discrete as possible. His knees are practically gouging his chin, but at least his legs are covering the logo on his hoodie. He can’t say for sure, but he doesn’t think a ragged, third-or-fourth-hand John Deere tractor hoodie is going to do him any favors around here.

He’s been left alone in the director’s office, with Miss Rico vouching for him being good while she arranges things. Once he’s contorted himself into an acceptable position, Bertolt examines the diplomas and awards on the wall. The director, some guy named Ness, is really educated, and Bertolt feels a small spike of jealousy in his chest. He’ll never get to go to college, he knows, and it bothers him that some people can have so many degrees while he’ll never even get one. 

The director has a framed photo on his desk, and after checking that he’s alone, Bertolt picks it up and turns it around. It’s a picture of the director with another man, a little girl propped up between their arms, and Bertolt frowns a little, not understanding.

“That’s my partner and our daughter.”

Bertolt nearly leaps out of his skin, fumbling the frame and coming within a few heartbeats of dropping it. He sets it back on the desk with a hurried clatter, and turns to the director with wide eyes, his heart in his throat. “I didn’t break it.”

“I know you didn’t.” The director moves slowly around his desk and settles into his chair, tenting his hands in front of his chest and watching Bertolt. “I don’t mind curiosity.”

“Yes, sir.” Bertolt has no idea what he’s supposed to say, and so defaults to the intense politeness he knows these type of guys expect.

The director watches him a moment longer before reaching across the desk, extending his hand. Bertolt stares at it, bewildered, and the director waits patiently until he figures out what’s going on. He shakes the director’s hand, wishing his palm wasn’t clammy and damp with sweat. 

If it bothers him, the director doesn’t show it. “I’m Director Ness,” he says as he takes his hand back, and he sounds calm and rational, although Bertolt knows that could be a disguise. He’s known too many adults who seem normal and pleasant when other people are around, but then turn into shrieking harpies at the slightest provocation. He won’t trust Ness until he’s been given a damn good reason to.

“Welcome to the group house,” the director continues, oblivious to Bertolt’s thoughts. “We’re a small, state-funded house for young people like yourself, who need a place to stay and finish their schooling. Our rules are strict but fair; you’re not here to party and sell drugs, but to get your high school diploma. We happen to be in a very good school district, and we’ll get you registered for classes as quickly as we can.” The director fixes Bertolt to his chair with his gaze, and Bertolt can feel his face heating up in embarrassment; he knows the director has read his file, and the kinds of things that he’s found there. He waits for the inevitable question, the one people have been asking him since he was ten and the one he’s asked himself for his entire life: what’s wrong with you, anyway? You’re not an addict or a rabble-rouser or a dealer or a wannabe gangster, so why hasn’t anyone ever adopted you? Why are you still in the system at this point?

The director doesn’t ask, though, and instead launches into a spiel about the rule and routines of the house, which Bertolt listens to with half an ear. He’s been in enough of these homes to have a pretty good idea of what is and isn’t expected of him, and the rest are just minor details. It isn’t until the director mentions something about ‘home buddies’ that Bertolt lifts his head and starts paying attention.

“What’s a home buddy?” It sounds suspiciously like he’s going to be saddled with an elementary school kid to mentor or something, and Bertolt wants nothing to do with the idea. He’s not a role model and never wanted to be one.

“Another student in the house,” the director answers smoothly, clearly prepared for Bertolt’s apprehension. “Someone who, in this case, is new to the system and could use some guidance from someone who’s been there.”

Bertolt narrows his eyes. “You want me to babysit.”

“Not really. More helping your fellow man than babysitting.” The director consults a file on his desk. “Fellow woman, in this case.”

Bertolt draws his legs back up towards his chest, hiding the yellow logo on his hoodie. “I’m not very good at helping.”

“I think you’d be surprised.” As if on cue, someone knocks on the door, and the director calls them in.

~*~

Annie hates it here already. The cop—the one that wouldn’t quit talking, who told her about his kid and his wife and then babbled about colors for awhile—walks beside her, his arms loose and relaxed at his sides, and Annie wonders how hard it would be to hit him in the stomach and make a break for it. She’s a good runner, she knows she could outdistance this middle-aged police officer easily enough, disappearing into the streets… but then where would she go? They’re in Trost now, deep in the heart of the city, and she’d be hopelessly lost within moments. If they were in the woods, if they were somewhere wild, she’d probably try it, but the city intimidates her, and she doesn’t know how to find her way back to her father anyway. No, it’s better to wait, to plan, and then make her break for it later, when she knows how to track down her dad and break him loose and take him away to somewhere safe.

The house is ugly and worn down, with a scabby, half-dead lawn, and a few teenagers linger in the driveway, scattering at the appearance of the police car. Annie skulks out of the car and follows the cop into the house, aware that she’s being watched by the teenagers from wherever they’ve gone and wishing she could seek them out and make them stop.

“You’ll like Director Ness,” the cop tells her as they check in with a bored woman at the front counter. “I’ve worked with him before, and he’s a good man.”

Annie doesn’t answer; she sees no point. She won’t be here for very long, just long enough to plan her escape, and then none of this will matter anymore.

The cop knocks on a door with a brass name plaque on it, and a cheerful voice tells them to enter. The cop holds the door for Annie, and after a mistrustful glance, she slinks inside.

The first thing she sees is another teenager, a boy, with shaggy dark hair and olive skin, curled around himself in a plastic chair. He glances up, his eyes skittering across her face before fixing somewhere in the distance, and she realizes that she’s never seen eyes that exact shade of deep green before. 

Annie swallows and sits down in the other plastic chair, pointedly avoiding looking at the boy. She isn’t one to get crushes, never has been, and now is definitely not the time or the place… but as the director introduces himself and drones on while the cop fidgets behind them, she can’t deny the little spark she feels in her chest, the first emotion she’s felt since they tore her away from her father and toted him away. She feels a draw to the boy with the green ones, one that she can’t explain, one she doesn’t have to words to express. All she knows is that he’s the most handsome boy she’s ever seen, and that they don’t belong here. Neither one of them should be in this place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, this is so much harder to write than Namaste! I'm going to be honest, Annie fans, she is really, really hard for me to write, and then things end up taking a lot longer. I am, however, enjoying the chance to have multiple narrators (including my first time writing Nile Dok!), and I hope everyone else is liking that too.
> 
> Back to Reiner next chapter, which hopefully will be longer and won't have such a long wait attached.

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go again!
> 
> This is more of a teaser than a proper chapter, but I think the only thing that will get me updating regularly again is being accountable to all of you.


End file.
